Wow, it has been just a smidgin over four years ago since I started out on a whole new adventure in my life by quitting my IT job and trying something completely different: cooking school. My life, however, has never traveled in a linear path, and I wasn’t really sure what I expected to get out of cooking school except a way out of a job that had come very close to killing me (literally). Now, four years later, the path I find myself on at the moment bears almost no resemblance to the one that seemed to lay before me then.
On the other hand, my friend and cooking school cohort Jo Horner had this really lovely post about how the path we set out on back then has taken her exactly where she wanted to go. Her business as a chef instructor and caterer has taken off, even in the present economy. If there is such a thing as a “Happily Ever After”, I think Jo has found it. It’s very reassuring to hear that some people do indeed make good on the promises of change they make to themselves. And she is not the only friend I have who seems to be making headway on lifelong dreams, just the only one I know with a blog to post to about it. :-p
Midlife isn’t the vast empty wasteland that younger people make it out to be. A lot of people allow themselves to be limited by their own outdated models of how the world should be, or by paying more tribute to someone else’s articulation of happiness, and so for them midlife can seem like a trek across a desolate plain, but it is not necessarily so. Even if the path to something wonderful and fulfilling isn’t as straightforward for some of us, I think the opportunity to explore and learn and discover is a pretty good alternative.
I am proud of my friend and happy for her that things have worked out so well, and also for my other friends who are seeing the rewards of their adventures beginning to bear fruit as well. You inspire me and give me the strength to continue my own journey, wherever it may take me.
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
Awwww thanks! I have hopes that you too will one day find a good path. I agree with what you say about middle age as well, even if I am in full denial that i am in middle age.
As you know, my own “career” path has probably resembled something more like a frog leaping from lilly pad to lilly pad and certainly not a measurable success by most standards but I’ve gotten old enough to not care so much what others think about what I happen to be doing at any given point in time.
I enjoyed reading about Jo’s success, but I also know that you took a huge leap of your own and moved away from a career/job that was actually killing you. I would measure that as a giant success too.